Weaning Them Off Soda/Maine

The Bangor Daily News ^ | 5 July 2002 | who knows!

[SheLion]

A group of dedicated health specialists met again this week to fine-tune its plan to encourage every school in Maine to get rid of sodas, chips and other non-nutritional items.

They have put together an information packet warning against soda and chips as major causes of a current epidemic of obesity and tooth decay throughout the country but especially in Maine. The packet includes research articles and fact sheets designed to persuade students, parents, teachers and school administrators that the campaign is one tangible, practical means of improving health and heading off future disease. The committee has met with vending machine companies and obtained assurances of cooperation.

The next step will be to develop a strategy presentation for individual school districts. Pilot projects in several Maine communities are scheduled to start March 1, 2003, After evaluation of the results, the statewide campaign is slated for the school year starting in September 2004.

One question that arose in this week’s meeting was how best to get the students to realize that it is up to them to control their own diet and escape from the vending-machine monopolies in many schools that promote consumption of the big-name drinks that are heavy on sugar and caffeine.

A nutritionist suggested permitting a choice between healthful and unhealthful items. Others believe that, if given a choice, many students will take the junk.

Another question is how the vending companies may respond to the campaign. Milk and plain water must be carefully defined or some vendor may come up with a pricey new variation. How about Coke-flavored milk?

The committee is preparing for the day when it will seek wider publicity. It is drafting model news stories and news releases. One suggestion, unanimously approved, was that they drop the technical term “dental caries” in their fact sheets and refer simply to plain old “tooth decay.” That was a step in the right direction.

[kellynla]

Maybe you and your ilk need to take a remedial reading course. I personally don't care about your smoking habits. The original post was about OBESE CHILDREN. You can smoke until your lungs collapse and I couldn't care less...as I said before I don't care as long as you don't blow smoke in my face or ask me to pay higher insurance premiums for the yellow tooth, cancer stix hacking MORONS...now have a good one...

[liberallarry]

I guess you chose your screen name as well as I chose mine.

[maxwell]

"We the great unwashed are just too stupid to make the basic decisions of our daily lives and the educated few must pass laws to protect us from ourselves."

That is exaclty the way the nanny-staters think.

The thing is, dude, we may be unwashed, some of us in particular, bwahaha, but we ain't stoopid and uneducated. Many of us have college degrees (for whatever that's worth... OK back on track...) and other training. We are smart fairly-well-informed folks, we think through things as well as anybody. The thing IS, we don't come to kosher conclusions, we don't subscribe to intellectual chic, we don't grab onto the ideological flavor of the week in order to fit in a prescribed groove and escape castigation from the Powers That Be. It's people like us that provide a pragmatic, maybe even moral, plumbline to measure liberal folly against...

'Cuz of people like us
There's honky tonk music, long neck bottles
Rusty old pickup trucks
Oh at last call the lights go up
And its all because of people like us...

Anyway back on topic... Uhhhhh... That's all I got, I done used up all my three-syllable words for today...

[liberallarry]

Cuba turns out good cigars despite all the bad stuff.
Why can't it have a good medical system as well? I'm open to exploring the possibility...which is more than I can say for you.

[Psycho_Bunny]

I guess you chose your screen name as well as I chose mine.

I don't think so.  Your nick isn't "Larry the Idiot".

[liberallarry]

yet you believe that Cuba, a country that can't feed its own people, can't supply jobs and has no free market, can afford all this modern technology?

Sorry, missed this in my first reply.

No. You missed the point. They can't(I think) afford the new technology. Yet I'm told they deliver excellent health care by most measures. How do they do it? Do they do it? Can they do it?

I'm curious as hell. Why aren't you?

[discostu]

Who cares about your European "friends"? Stop talking to the Fench and the Brits, they're food sucks and it makes them short skinny and bitter. Talk to some German's they bras average two cup sizes bigger than us, they understand what it means to be plump in all the right places. I live here, you live here, all you gotta do is look around. Yes there are fatties, but there have always been fatties, the average person is still the average person, they look about the same as the yalways have. What facts are there to dispute Larry? The two most useful measures for a nation's health are it's life expetancy and average height, our are UP. "nuff said.

There's nothing wrong with my arguement. Your "facts" are self contradictory. Those three things cannot possibly be true at the same time. There is NO obesisty problem. There is NO health system collapese. You're WRONG. Handle it bub. The simple fact that our longevity keeps climbing shows that your two posits are WRONG, across the board. The infant mortality rate in this contry hasn't budged in decades, with good reason it was down to nil by the end of WWII. We're adding life expectancy on the backend. Octegenarians are now no big deal, they're all over the place. People can now reasonably expect to live to their 80's. Their 80's man. And not like in a nursing home convalescing, we're talking up and about and playing golf living to their 80s. You don't get that in a country with an obesity problem or a collapsing health system. You get than in a country that's doing well. We're fine. Like so many other "health crisis" of the past this one is all smoke and mirrors looking for a new excuse to tax the crap out of us. Well you can have my Doritos when you pry them from my cold dead hands... and that's gonna be a while I'm only 32 and plan to be around to piss you off for another 50 years.

[liberallarry]

I don't think...

That describes you completely.

[discostu]

Relax, chill, unwind. Seriously, this kind of aggression level is bad for your heart. There's a reason why places with more a higher percentage of smoking and drinking have longer life spans. They've learned to mellow out. Life's tribulations are a lot easier to figure out after a couple of Dunhills and some Talisker.

[metesky]

I'm curious as hell. Why aren't you?

Gee, it might be because I've read the histories of other socialist, communist, totalitarian systems and know where they lead, which is straight into the dustbin of history.

[liberallarry]

My friends are German.

When I look around I see far more fatties than I ever did. Especially kids. You don't? Ok. But I suggest you look more carefully at the statistics.

[liberallarry]

They still make great cigars.

[Gabz]

anybody who smokes TODAY is a MORON...

Temper, temper........personal attacks are no nos at FR - and that is a personal attack, not just on the person to whom you were posting but to me, and several others here.

[discostu]

Holly crap you've got German's making fun of us. Tell them to get bent. Ask them what it is that goes behind the bra, they are fatty deposits after all. from what've I've seen coming out of Germany it's either round or bean pole, maybe they're just jealous because some of us work out.

I drive by 3 schools getting to work (not bad this time of year, kind of annoying during the school year), kids are nice and skinny and run across the street nice and quick.

I have looked VERY carefully at the stats. Here's what I see: average life expectancy is now kicking right around 80, average height is over 6 feet, average weight is up but as a percentage matches the height increase, the "obesity bar" has been changed to the point that Arnold Swchwartzenager is now obese (like I said, it's a flat scale height to weight, nothing for skeletal build, muscle mass or % body fat). If you keep all the stats except the obesity measure (which is horrid science even those quick little school kids I try not to run over could spot as bogus) you have a clear picture of a nation that's healthier now than ever before. The obsity stats disagree with everything else. Which stats are more likely to be accurate: the one that stands alone or the ones backed up by dozens of others?

[Psycho_Bunny]

Keep replying. You're looking smarter and smarter all the time.

[metesky]

Cuba turns out good cigars despite all the bad stuff.

Geez, Larry you're right. I don't know why I didn't see it before.

Cuba was turning out hand-rolled cigars when Colombus landed. Look at all the progress they've made in 510 years.

Therefore we should emulate them in all things.

I just don't understand how I could be so dense.

[maxwell]

The "obesity problem" is people fudging with numbers until everybody but Calista Flockhart is classified "obese".

This is true. What're the stats, Larry, a good quarter of American citizens classified as "obese" now? And that's calculated how, BMI? If BMI is the main indicator used, then "25%" may be utter horse hocky.

[liberallarry]

Therefore we should emulate them in all things. I just don't understand how I could be so dense.

Neither do I. I recommend that we emulate them in things they do right - not in all things.

[liberallarry]

To a certain extent we've reached an impasse.

I see an America populated with an increasing percentage of fat kids. You don't.
I see an America less able to deliver health care to most of its people than it was 10 years ago. You don't.

A strictly market approach renders the argument moot. I'll look for answers to the problems I see. If I'm correct I'll make a fortune and you won't. If I'm wrong perhaps you'll buy me a cup of coffee.

A word about the connection between longevity, health care, and obesity. Most of the advances in average longevity are due to advances in child care, basic sanitation, and freedom from starvation - not to the superiority of our health-care system over others or to the presence or absence of obesity. I thought to demonstrate this with a chart showing average life-span by country (and in particular showing lifespan in Cuba which I'm told is equal to ours) but I was unable to come up with it in the time I have to spare.

[discostu]

Because none of the stats back you up.

I might buy a cup of coffee from you, but not for.

Again, how can improved child health care get people living past 80. The reality out there just doesn't match up with your preconceptions. Infant and child mortality has been neglible in America for a long time. At that point life expectancy was in the high 60s, now it's in the low 80s.

Cuba has socialized medicine. There's a reason you get good doctors fleeing socialized medicine in droves (just check out how many Canadian doc you've got up north) and bad doctors head to socialized medicine. Anything saying Cuban life expectancy is in our neighborhood is BS.